🧮 Free HR calculator
Employee Turnover Rate Calculator
Enter how many people left and your headcount at the start and end of the period — then add the optional fields for even more. You get turnover, retention, voluntary and involuntary split, first-year attrition, headcount growth, hiring rate, estimated replacement cost and a plain-English reading. Nothing is sent anywhere — the maths runs in your browser.
📥 Your numbers
Turnover rate
7.4%
🟢 Excellent
This is low turnover for most industries. Protect it — document what is working before the people who built it leave.
- Average headcount
- 188
- Retention rate
- 92.2%
- Voluntary turnover
- —
- Involuntary turnover
- —
- First-year attrition
- —
- Headcount growth
- 8.9%
- Hiring rate
- —
- Estimated replacement cost
- —
📐 The employee turnover rate formula
Average headcount = (Starting headcount + Ending headcount) ÷ 2
- Leavers — everyone who left employment in the period, whether they resigned, were dismissed, were made redundant or reached the end of a contract.
- Average headcount — using the average rather than the starting figure stops a growing or shrinking team from distorting the rate.
- Period — pick monthly, quarterly or annual and keep it the same every time, or your trend line is meaningless.
🧾 Worked example
A manufacturing company starts the year with 180 employees and ends with 196. During the year 14 people leave, 9 of them by resignation.
- 1. Average headcount = (180 + 196) ÷ 2 = 188
- 2. Turnover rate = (14 ÷ 188) × 100 = 7.4%
- 3. Voluntary turnover = (9 ÷ 188) × 100 = 4.8%
- 4. Retention rate = ((180 − 14) ÷ 180) × 100 = 92.2%
The reading for a board pack is not "turnover is 7.4%". It is: turnover stayed under 8% while headcount grew 9%, and two thirds of exits were resignations — so the question for the next quarter is why those nine chose to leave.
❓ Common questions
- What is a good employee turnover rate?
- Under 10% a year is strong in most industries, 10–20% is normal, and above 20% usually signals a retention problem. Hospitality, retail and call centres run far higher by nature, so your own trend and your own industry matter more than any global figure.
- Voluntary or involuntary — which should I report?
- Both, separately. Voluntary turnover is people choosing to leave you; involuntary is you releasing them. A single blended number hides which of the two problems you actually have.
- Is retention rate just 100 minus turnover?
- No. Turnover uses average headcount and includes people hired and lost within the same period; retention looks only at the people who were there at the start and are still there at the end. They will rarely add up to exactly 100.
- How often should I calculate it?
- Monthly for operations, quarterly for leadership, annually for the board — always with the previous period beside it so the direction of travel is visible.
Related reading: The HR Analytics Framework: 5 Steps to Board-Ready Metrics